Once a person signs up for a social networking site, the next step he would take is to identify other members that they can build relationships with. These relationships are known as contacts or friends. The term friends, though, can be ambiguous since not all the relationships online can be considered real friendship in its natural meaning. Social network sites have features that allow people to leave messages to others in their profiles. These messages may be personal or viewable to the public, which is commonly known as a comment (although it may vary according to the networking site). These features are present at almost every social networking site.

Aside from leaving comments and messages, social networking sites also have photo and video sharing tools so you and your friends can exchange pictures. There are also some sites that have instant messaging feature, where you can chat continuously until one decides to log his account out. There are also blogging tools that are built in, so you can write something about a certain topic and let all your friends know about it.

And with social networking, you may even do business. This method is indeed very useful to a lot of people. Selling of a product through social networking websites is a very popular means of marketing.

Social networking websites make up an important research framework for people investigating processes of self-presentation, friendship performance and impression management. These types of public display of connection plays the role of a very essential characteristic signal that aids people in the navigation of the world of social networking.